Working Groups

The Arts Front Steering groups provide advice on the overall direction of the Arts Front project.

Membership of main Steering Group is voluntary and open to anyone with an Arts Front profile. New membership of First Nations Steering Group is decided by the First Nations Steering Group. Decision making is by consensus. The Steering Groups will meet quarterly in 2017 and meetings will be organised by Feral Arts. Agendas and meeting notes will be accessible and available to all members via Google Docs.

Arts Front Under 30 is envisaged as a three day gathering of 100 diverse young people from across Australia in 2018.

“We want to take the lead in setting the vision for arts and culture in this country in 2030 and beyond. Let’s face it - by that time we will be the ones running the sector anyway! So why not take the lead now and create a future that young artists actually want!”

A/Prof Bree Hadley, Associate Director of the QUT Creative Lab, and independent researcher Dr Donna McDonald are currently working with the Arts Front team on a research project that investigates the ways in which arts funding organisations, arts organisations, arts advocacy bodies, disability service providers, and other stakeholders will need to change their business models to continue to provide platforms for disability arts practice in this new NDIS operating environment.

In the past decade, the range and diversity of practices that fall under the broad umbrella of ‘disability arts’ in Australia has grown exponentially. The evidence confirms that engagement with arts, culture, and media practice has a significant impact on our health, wellbeing, and whole-of-life experience as disabled people, as well as our efforts to speak back to the stereotyping, exclusion, and economic marginalisation we are still subject to. With the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, disability arts agencies, organisations, and providers – and the disabled people they serve – will have to work in a new system in which funding is provided not through direct-to-organisation block grants, in advance, but through annually approved individual self-management plans providing people with disabilities with whole-of-life supports and services, in arrears. This reform will bring wide-reaching chances for disability arts practitioners, advocates, and scholars.

why the arts matter

“Part of the exhaustion of being an arts worker in Australia is that our very existence is continually in public question. Again and again, we have to assert presence and value. It is impossible to simply assume that culture is a common good: it must be constantly argued.” (Croggon, 2017)

WHY SHOULD ART BE FUNDED BY THE PUBLIC PURSE?

Around 85% of Australians believe that the arts make life richer and more meaningful. 38% participate actively in the arts more than 6 times a year. More Australians attend art galleries than go to the football. We buy more books per head than almost any other nation… and yet as professional art makers we still have to continually defend and draw attention to the fact that that we exist and that we need to be paid for what we do. We need to justify and re-justify that it is how we make our living.

The question isn’t if we should create or participate in culture. It isn’t why or even how we engage. We do that anyway, its part of being human.

The question is why should government prioritise paying for professional artists to produce art and to lead cultural development and production?

WE ARE MOUNTING A CAMPAIGN…

We want to protect arts funding in this country. We want to make sure Australia funds professional arts workers to make art and lead cultural development well into the future, for our children and grandchildren and for the artists of coming generations.

WHY THE ARTS MATTER

is a social action & media campaign to raise awareness of the public value of the arts, and make the case for public money for arts and culture that represent public value.

Public value is contested. There is disagreement about what is or should be of value to the public. Nevertheless, public value is determined by reference to collectively desired social outcomes that are expressed through the democratic process.

Through our media and social action campaign we will call on the community to disrupt and rethink how people think and talk about culture and the arts.

We want people to recognise the value of arts and culture as a common and necessary good.

And we want governments to commit to ongoing public funding for public value in the cultural sphere.

We want to see the arts on the agenda again for the next election!

STEP 1 of the campaign will be to make a video that seeks to articulate some of the reasons why the arts matter.

There will be other actions that will be taken as part of the campaign which will unfold over the next couple of years.
If you have ideas or want to be involved, a working party is being formed now – send your contact details to Jami Bladel – director@kickstart.org.au

What are we rcognising as not working? eg colonisation, privilege, power
What empowers a new conversation?
is it:
1. Inclusion?
2. Decolonisation?
3. A new definition of arts practice?
Or is our foundation/frame - equality in every sense - funding, practice, inclusion, First Peoples impact, all of it